Page 110 of Drown Like Heaven
She’d probably be pissed at me for essentially stalking her, but I could deal with anger more than I could deal with distance.
As I walked past a different building than the one Dakota was in right now, a tall man exited the doors. Dark blond hair, broad shoulders, strong jaw. The most attractive man I’d seen in my entire life. He noticed me the second I noticed him.
Everything slowed.
The muscle in my chest kicked harder.
I forgot how to breathe.
Fuck, I didn’t even know how many years it’d been since I’d seen him at this point. And it still didn’t matter.
There wasn’t a length of time that’d ever erase him from my mind. Every single detail, every goddamn inch of him, lived in my brain. Micah Killshaw was etched deep into my skull, a stain on my soul that I couldn’t scrub out, no matter how hard I tried. I hated him just as much as I had on the day he’d left me.
His eyes pinned me to the spot, gray-blue with that dark ring around his iris, his jaw tightening.
My nostrils flared, blood rushing to my cock.
If I was farther from him, I probably wouldn’t have acknowledged him, but he was standing not three feet from me, looking at me like he wished I was anyone else. I allowed my gaze to drift down his body, once, for just an instant, my eyes skimming his sculpted chest, his strong thighs. I felt that quick glance everywhere.
“Mason,” he greeted, toneless, his voice aching somewhere deep in my chest.
“Micah.” His name tasted like burning obsession in my mouth, like memories of heat and sweat and darkness, like years of pure fucking agony.
To think there used to be a time when everything didn’t hurt like this. When I used to wake up naked next to him andlikeit. When he couldn’t keep his hands off me, and I couldn’t keep my hands off him, and violence and sex were the same thing for us, an inextricable knot. When he used to know me better than anyone.
Now, I couldn’t think of a person I hated more.
“You’ve changed,” I commented, a slight edge in my voice. He hadn’t changed physically, but I knew he had more degrees now, knew he was teaching classes here, knew he had his own lab.
“You haven’t.”
The words hit right where he’d intended them to, but I didn’t respond.
I couldn’t give him that satisfaction.
If he knew me even half as well as he used to, he was already of aware of how he’d just cut me. He knew every whispered, angry confession, every time I’d ripped out my own heart, trying to be something better for him.
I held his stare for another minute, unfaltering, then I walked around him, not sparing a backwards glance.
Evil. Pure fucking evil.
My chest was tight, a sick angry feeling twisting in my gut.
You haven’t.His words reverberated around my head, reminding me of all my worst fears, reminding me I was exactly the same person I’d been at the end.
I fucking know. I’m incapable of change.
I continued towards Dakota’s class building, a knot in my throat, a spiral tugging at my brain.
I shouldn’t have said anything to him. Shouldn’t have acknowledged him at all.
Shit.
Seeing Micah was throwing me severely off-balance—more than I even thought it would. Though I’d honestly thought I would never see him again, not before I inevitably killed myself. I tried feverishly to shove all my feelings about it to the back of my mind, knowing he could make me break again if I let him.
The last time I’d seen him was with my own bleeding heart in my hands and his back to me as he walked away.
I can’t think about this.
